Then, in December, at the Spike TV Video Game Awards, a trailer for a game called The Phantom Pain was shown, but was not directly linked to the Metal Gear series or to publisher Konami. Instead it was said to be a production of a developer called "Moby Dick Studios," which as far as anyone could ascertain, did not exist. Spike TV's Geoff Keighley did an interview with the putative studio head of Moby Dick, one "Joakim Mogren," whose head was covered in bandages for the duration of the interview.

Photos: Alex Washburn/Wired

As the Game Developers Conference session began, Kojima entered the room, his head covered in bandages, taking the stage to show a new trailer. The video of the game made everything crystal clear, ending with a title card that read Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, surprising precisely no one.

"The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes put together is Metal Gear Solid V," Kojima said after removing the bandages. He then picked up an Xbox 360 controller (though he said the game was running on a PC) to play through a section of the game's tutorial. Taking place in a hospital under attack, it shows the series' main character Solid Snake waking up after being in a coma for 9 years. He has serious trouble moving (and his left hand has been replaced by a metal hook), so the player makes him crawl on his hands through the hospital, following behind a character whose head is bandaged up just like Kojima's was when he entered the room.

Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired

Kojima says Metal Gear Solid V is an open-world game, as was promised at the announcement of Ground Zeroes in August. But, he noted, the tutorial hospital-crawling scene was "on rails" to get the player used to the game's controls.

After the trailer, Kojima quickly left the stage and other team members discussed the features of Fox Engine, the new tools that the Kojima Productions studio is using to create the incredibly realistic-looking game.